Vermont phÅ“nix. [volume] (Brattleboro, Vt.) 1834-1955, 1887-07-22
Il YEAR IN Il LOG CABIN
Novelist w. ID. HoweIIs Gives the Auto
biography of isis BOyhOOd.

| erty on the Little Miami river to take
charge of n sawm mill and grist-mill and su-
| perlntend the never accomplished transfer
nation Of the latter into papcr-mill Nv
| father left disastrous newspaper enter
! prise behind him when he came out to ap-
| ply his mechanical taste and his knowledge
! of farming TO the care of their place.
Early in the century his parents had brought
! him to Ohio from Wales, and his boybuod
was passed in the new country, where pi-
oneer customs and traditions were still rife,
and for him it was like renewing the wild
romance Of those days TO take up once
more the life of a log cabin interrupted by
| forty years sojourn in matter of fact dwell
ings Of frame and brick.
Our cabin stood close upon the road but
behind it broadened a corn field Of 80 acres
They still built log-cabins for dwellings in
that region, thirty years ago, but ours
must have been nearly half "A century old
ly vacated by an old Virginia couple who
had long occupied it, and we decided that
1t needed some repairs to make it habitabe
even for family Injured to hardship bv
dauntless imaginations, and accustomed to
retrospective discomfOrts of every kind
So, before we all came out to it, a deputa-
ton of adventures put it in what rude or
der they could. They glazed the narrow
windows, they relaid the rotten floor, they
touched too sketchily, as it afterward ap-
peared) the broken roof and they papered
the walls of the ground-hoo rooms. Per
haps it was my fathers love of literature
which inspired him 10 choose newspapers
for this purpose at any rate he did 50,
and the effect. as | remember it, was not
without its decorative qualities He had
used a barrel Of papers bought at the near
est post office, where they had been refused
by the persons to whom they had been ex-
perimentally sent by the publisher and the
whole first page was taken up by a story,
which broke of in the middle Of SEN
tence at the foot Of the last column. and
tantalized US forever with fruitless coniec-
ture as to the fate Of the hero and heroine.
In due time the whole family took up its
abode in the cabin The household furni-
ture had been brought out and bestowed in
its scanty space, the bookcase had been set
up, and the unbound books packed in easi-
ly accessible barrels. There yet remained
some Of our possessions to follow, chief Of
which was the COW for in those simple
days people kept cows in town, and it fell
to me TO hel p my father drive her out to
her future home. / do not remember now
Just how 1t was that we came by the differ
ent animals of the horse kind" as NV
father humorously called them. which we
housed in an old log stable not far from our
cabin. They must have been temporary
supply, until team worthy our new. sky
blue wagon could be found. One of them
was a colossal sorrel, inexorably hide-bound
whose barrel, as | believe the horsemen
call the body, showed every hoop upon it.
He had feeble foolish whimper Of n voice
and we nick-naned him baby. His com
panion was a dun mare who had what nv
father at once called an italic foot, in rec
ognition Of the emphatic slant at which she
carried it when upon her unwilling travels.
Our pigs were very social creatures. They
would willingly have shared our firesde
with us, humble as it was, and being re-
PEELED, they took up their quarters on cold
nights at the warm base of the chimney
without. where we could hear them. as long
as we kept awake, disputing the places
next to the stones. All this was horrible
to my mother, whose housewifely instincts
were perpetually offended by the rude con-
ditious of our life, and who Justly regard
ed 1t as return to a state which, if poetic
was also not far from barbarous. But chill
dren, and more particularly boys, take ev-
cry natural thing as naturally as savages,
and we never thought our pigs were other
than amusing. In that country pigs were
called to their feed with long cries of "Pip.
pig pooee, poo-e-el I" but ours were taught
TO come at a whistle, and on hearing it
would single themselves out of the neigh
bors' pigs and come rushing from all quar-
ters to the scattered corn with an intelli-
gence we were proud Of
As long as the fall weather lasted. and
well through the mild winter of that lat-
tude, our chief recreation, where all our
novel duties were delightful, was hunting
with the long smooth-bore shot gun. which
had descended laterally from one of our
uncles, and supplied the needs of the whole
family of boys in the chase. Never less
than two of us went out at once and gen
eerally there were three. This enabled us
to beat up the game over a wide extent of
country, and, while the eldest did the shoot
ing, left the others to rush upon him. as
soon as he fired with tumultuous cries of
did you hit it Did you hit it - Usual
ly he had not hit it, though now and then
our murderous Young blood was stirred by
the death agonies of some of the poor crea-
lures whose destruction boys exult in The
winter, which was so sore a trial for my
mother in the log cabin, and was not. per
haps, such poetic rapture for my father
as he had hoped, was a long delight to
their children. The centre of our life in
the cabin was, of course, the fireplace,
whose hugeness and whose mighty fires re
manned a wonder with us. There was a
crane in the chimney and dangling pot
hooks, and until the cooking stove could be
set up in an adjoining shed the cooking had
to be done ON the hearth and the bread
baked in Dutch oven in the hot ashes,
We had always heard Of this operation,
NaHlt1 1fsh e 1
nothing else, perhaps, realized them so Wv
idly for us as the loaf laid in the iron-hdde
skillet, which was then covered with ashes
and heaped with Goals. l am not certain
that the bread tasted any better for the ro-
mantle pcturesqueness Of its experience,
or that the corn meal, mixed warm from
the mill and baked on an oak plank set up
before the fire, had merits beyond the hoe
cake of art but | think there can be no
doubt that new corn, grated to meal, when
just out of the milk, and then nodded and
put in like manner to brown in the glow of
such embers would still have the sweetness
that was incompatible then. When the
maple sap started in February we tried the
scheme we had cherished all winter of max
ing it with tea, which should be in a man
ner self-sugared. But the scheme was a
failure we spoiled the sap without sweet
ening the tea.
We satup late before the big fire at night,
our faces burning in the glow, and our
backs and feet freezing in the draft that
swept in from the imperfectly closing door,
and then we boys climbed TO our bed in the
loft. We reached it by ladder, which we
should have been glad TO pull up after us,
as a protection against Indians in the pion-
eer fashion but with the advancement Of
modern luxury the ladder had been nailed
10 the floor Once aloft. however, we were
in a domain sacred TO the past. The rude
floor ratified and wavered loosely under our
tread, aud the window in the gable stood
open or shut at its own will There We're
cracks in the shingles through which we
could see the stars, when there We're stars
and which, when the first snow came, let
the flakes sfft in upon the floor. l should
not like 10 step out of bed into IA snow
wreath in the morning now but then
was glad TO do it, and 50 far from thinking
that or anything in our life a hardship, l
counted it all joy,
Our log-cabin stood only a stones cast
from the gray, old, weather tinted grist-
MILL whose voice was music for us by night
and by day, so that ON Sundays, when the
water was shut off from the great tub
wheels in its basement, it was as if the
world had gone deaf and dumb. A soft
sibilance ordinarily prevailed over the dull,
hoarse murmur Of the machinery but late
at night, when the water gathered that
mysterious force which the darkness gives
il, the voice of the mill had something
weird in it, like human moan.
Our new house got ON slowly, There